


Hotel Room (Free Love Revival)

by Rhanon_Brodie (Glass_Jacket)



Category: Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: End of an era, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, angsty, kinda sexy, mostly post coital introspection from both men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8110942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glass_Jacket/pseuds/Rhanon_Brodie
Summary: “He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.Nothing is more sublime.”  - Victor Hugo





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on September 1 on tumblr via @kittykillswitch. It needed a home with all the others. The final quote is from Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast', a collection of his works / short stories written in the 1920's when he was residing in Paris.

I think, _This is it_ as I stand in the room they’ve set aside for us, adjusting my collar, turning my head one way, and then the other, ensuring my sideburns are even.

I think, _This is it_ while you’re down the hall lounging against the concrete corridor, your leggy blond slouched down so you can look into her pretty blue eyes.

I think, _This is it_ and my stomach lurches so hard that my hand goes out, sweating fingertips pressed to the mirror to hold myself steady as the minutes count down to breathless seconds, and my heart beats madly.

And I think, _This is it, here, and now: one moment left when you're totally mine, and I'm forever yours._

_Isn't it funny what Paris does to us?_

+

“Ey up.”

You’ve come calling for once. I hadn’t bothered to take my shoes off when I got into the room; I was already planning on tracking you down, but here you are, throwing me for a loop, grinning at me with tired, tear-reddened eyes. We’d had but moments backstage after it was said and done and there, in the dark, you’d fallen apart and crashed into me, arm around my neck while you sobbed your sorrow. 

Don’t fool yourself; I know you felt my own shivers, the fear of the unknown, unavoidable, the unapproachable. Up until then, I hadn’t thought beyond those final notes, a strange sensation in my heart because you chose not to go out with The Meeting Place. Ten minutes before stage time you grabbed the list and scribbled, rearranging things, and I can’t deny wondering about the myriad of reasons why you’d made the changes.

You’re standing straighter now, and you’ve not even showered - not that I have, either. I feel like if I get clean the scent and the grit of the stage, of all the stages of us, will be washed away and I want to cling to everything I can for a little longer. So I grab you, yank you into the room, and shut the door behind you.

You rattle back against it and give me a goofy grin. There’s gin in that smile and I can smell it on your breath as you laugh softly. “Par’y’s down stairs.” The words roll around your mouth with your trademark casual grace but you can’t fool me, baby, not with the way you’re looking up at me with that eyebrow cocked and ready.

Your aim is true.

“Don’t wanna be anywhere else but right here,” I reply.

You nod, knowing that was going to be my answer. Shifting against the door, you duck your head and rub your palms over the snug, damp denim on your thighs before reaching to push your hair from your eyes. In those few seconds, I see the boy I met thirteen years ago, flushed with nervous energy, and delight, and uncertainty.

“Feel like a fookin’ fool righ’ now,” you admit, turning your hands over in surrender. “Like I don’t know what I’m doin’.” Your hands turn again, twisting with your words, grandiose gestures for something so simple.

I nod. “I know.” It’s not a lie, Al, I don’t know what I’m doing, either. I find myself slipping, skidding, trying to keep time with something that suddenly seems so off tempo and out of context. “Look, we can just...I mean…” I sigh and roll my eyes at the absurdity of our nerves. “Let’s have drink. You an’ me and no one else. One final one, then, before we go downstairs to fill appearances.”

“Appearances,” you repeat, as if the word is something new to add to your repertoire. “Miles, you know that...this is the appearance.” Your hand moves between as an indicator. “This is the illusion.”

My back is already turned as I move to the bar, so you can’t see the way my mouth turns down, nor the way my eyes close briefly at your callous words. Perhaps I stutter on the carpet, but I don’t let it stop me because if I stop you’ll know that something is up, that you’ve made a mark.

“So what’s reality, then?” I begin lightly enough, reaching for gin, opening a can of tonic, slicing limes with a flourish. “What’s the real story? You’re not satisfied sitting still, baby, we both know that. Gonna hang up your spurs and bring out the chariot, have a few laps with the Monkeys?” I look up from where I’m working to watch your reaction. I don’t get the one I want, so I dig a little more. “Have a few laps with Cookie?”

There it is - that look, that one you get when you want to tell me I’m crossing a line. I don’t really care. This is always in the back of me mind.

“Can we _not_ bring Jamie into this for once?” You snarl.

“That’s what it is, though. Right?” I’m swearing at myself while me mouth is runnin’ off, but I can’t help it, you know? You always bring out the best - and the worst - in me. I keep going. “You an’ him runnin’ in dangerous circles until one or both of ya crashes an somebody ends up bruised an’ crying.” 

“You think you don’t cut me to the quick?” You’ve dropped the snark and I’m still seething, even as your expression crumbles. “Don’t tell me that you’re not gonna go back to Malibu wiv Hannah an’ pretend we never were-”

“I _never_ do that, Al.”

“Yes, you do,” you sigh. There’s no fight in you tonight and you slump into a seat near the bar, elbows on your knees, head in your hands. “We bof do, Mi, we’d joost rather not admit it.”

My next question is desperately hasty. “Why can’t we be together?” God knows it’s a question we’ve both rolled round the edges of our collective mind, half a foot apart in separate beds on a tour bus.

“We were - we are together, Miles, in more ways than you realize. I’m here, right now.”

“And in the morning?”

“I’m sorreh,” you mumble stupidly. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I remain stubbornly silent.

“All right,” you sigh, standing and looking to the door. “I’ll be downstairs.” You slough off slowly like a lingering hangover and my stomach twists as I watch you go.

And then suddenly I’m there, barring the door, hand on your chest, my mouth gone off once more. “Al,” I breathe, searching your eyes. “We had all the time in the world and it was another endless summer, but now we're at the end and the girls are downstairs at our party and we've got this one moment left. Don’t walk away. Don’t leave me here just yet.”

Your dark eyes are glossy, and you lick your lips before you speak. “This won’t change anything.”

I crack a mournful smile. “Might make me feel a bit better for a little while.”

You head tilts in acceptance, and your lips do the same. “What is it about Paris?” You search my face as you let me take hold of your wrists to pull you forward.

“It’s the lights,” I reply, angling my head down to breathe across your lips. “The lights, laa, an’ not much more.”

+

It’s never been quite like this, Mi. Can you see that in me face as I stare up at you? I’ve never been more aware of you than I am right now, beneath you, your ragged breath and crooked smile flashing in the lights coming in from Paris in the predawn darkness.

Can I take my time with you now? It always seems so rushed, heaving breath on a sway-back bus, clawing hands in the clamouring cloak of a stage right alcove, in the murky ink of the studio, humid air hung with lubricious vowels and consonants. Can you take your time with me? Given forever, you’d be up to the challenge, I’m certain, but perhaps it’s these shifting minutest slipping through time so rapidly that make you my greatest lover, my most favourite and my most cherished. You cut no corners, and while you’re aware of several shortcuts, you pride yourself on taking the long way round, no matter the time, no matter the cost. It’s all or nowt with you, baby, and I am in awe that you’ve chosen me to devote this side of yourself to.

You fill me up proper, make me see stars, more than the lights, slashing green and amber in your gaze as you watch my every expression flit over my face with each tilt of your hips. I thought I was used to you, thought I could get the ease of worn in boots stepping in time, but you’ve exceeded any expectation tonight. I’ll admit I was so callous as to want your tears, your whimpering declaration of love so that I had something to wrap round me shoulders on a cold cross-Atlantic flight. Instead, you’ve given me a growling exhibition of carnality, brutal hips and bruising lips, and I’m not likely to sleep for days now.

I could never walk away from your torturous ways, and I could never give you up completely. I’ll gladly take your abuse if it means you still love me enough to make it hurt. Your words or your kisses cut the same way; I wonder if you even realize how deadly you really are. With your secret weapons of mass destruction you can reduce me to some shade of meself, awkward and anxious, someone I haven’t met in a very long time.

You fuck _hard_. You always have, even when you’re at your most serene, your most gentle. It’s not always in the hips, but rather your hands, and your breath, the broken-nose ache that comes when your forehead presses to mine and I’ve no choice but to snare the shorn hair on your scalp and hold you steady. You fuck hard, Miles, right to another part of me that makes me wish you hadn’t brought up the things you did. And as punishment, you turn me over, pushing my shoulders down, pulling my hips up, and back, until I’m arranged on the platter and you’re wondering where you’ll start. You’re such a glutton, baby, rolling in the scent, making a mess, fingers slipping up my spine so you can tear another part of me off and consume it. I love it, and I love you, and I tell you as much, an admission that makes your hips rattle against mine as you keen, and tell me you already know.

“I’m not some girl breakin’ into your heart, baby,” you rasp. “I’ve been there the whole time.”

Your declaration rolls through me, and I shudder and push back with a nod. It’s true, so fucking true that it’s scary. Only you, Mi. You’re the only one who’s never outstayed his welcome. With your hands over mine, your fingers tethering me to the bed, curling and clutching, I know you’re close. I love that I know when you’re close, just like you know my little nuances. No doubt your toes are digging into the mattress; you’ve lain yourself across my back, sweat and heat and skin, your breath a cooling sigh of reassurance that flits through my damp hair and hits the back of my neck. Curling my fingers around yours until I’m sure the knuckles will pop, I push back again, grinding my pelvis down against the sheets.

I'm not crying, _you're_ crying. My eyes squeeze shut at the heat of it all. “Stay a while longer,” I offer with a gasp.

_Don’t ever leave me._

+

The lights, laa, d’ya see the lights? Comin’ in at all angles, making you a pale pane of iron and glass, spiderwebbed and sleeping. It was barely an hour ago that you were alive and gleaming in me arms, awash in so many colours as you gasped and nodded, fingers splayed over the back of my head as you pulled me down and gave me your all. I have to believe that it was everything, because that’s what I gave in return: every shred of myself left at the end of this long, dusty ride of summer, every ounce of my being that you refill before you go.

Only, I’m the one doing the leaving this time. I can’t let you walk out on me again, so I figure it’s easier this way. When you go, I’m stranded in time for a while, uncertain of my next move, and it takes some time to reset and get my bearings. Hurricane Alexander comes crashing through me mind at every turn, breakin’ me door down, and me heart.

The strange thing is that we’ll see each other sooner than I’d care to. Oh, I’m all for longing, Al, for pining after you, and so I might not make it to Malibu just yet. You’ll become aware of this some time next week, no doubt, when you pull up me drive and hammer your fist on the door, telling me you’ve got something to show me. I won’t be there - I can’t be there, you understand. This time it hurts more than the last, when we were younger men, naive and inexperienced in everything but whimsical fascination. I know my heart now because you’re the one who reached in and disconnected the valves, wrestled it free, and held it up between us. The entirety of the right atrium is dedicated to you.

It’s been half an hour since you roused, throwing a leg over mine from where you slumped on your front next to me. Little by little you dragged yourself across my frame until the top of your head was butted up under me chin, your hands curling around my ribs and further down looking for the ignition switch. I’d be lying if I said I weren’t idling, merely laying with my eyes closed until your breathing changed. You always have to have the last word, Al, and while you’ve gotten it with you victory lap where you perched above me and gave it so sweetly - you’re gorgeous, laa, inexplicably, with your shifting outward appearance, your home sweet home smile. And you know as you twist your hips to bubble my words that you’ve gotten what you want; at least you think you have. To be frank I’m not sure you know what you want, and therefore I’m not sure if I can give it to you. I want to be able to, but there’s something about it, about Paris, about us, that seems to go unanswered. 

In some ways, you will always remain a mystery to me, and I am strangely satisfied with the notion.

+

Thank you for the paracetamol and the glass of water you’ve left behind. There’s quite a bit more of your paraphernalia strewn about, of course, invisible as it may be; I feel it all the same. You’ve beaten me to the punch; when I reached out to find my phone and check the time, I didn’t need to turn over to know that your side of the bed was empty. My fingers brushed over my phone and landed on an envelope, a little bulky in the middle, and sealed with your lips. Rolling to my back among the pillows where you bedded and deaded me, I am content to hold the creamy paper and gummy-sweet emulsion of glue wetted by your tongue under my nose. I can practically taste your words and I let my eyes close as my brain flicks through the snapshots from the summer.

A moment later and I’m tearing the thing open, of course, eager for whatever message you’ve left me, and my breath catches in my throat as a hard, little trinket tumbles from its hiding spot to land on my chest, cold and stark, and glittering.

It is my Death Ramps ring.

I read:

_Al -_

_I probably should have given this to you sooner, the same day I found it, perhaps, or maybe before last night’s show. Call me a sentimental fool, but that would have been too much for me to handle, I suppose. It’s easier right now, before the sun is up, long before you’ll wake. I’m dressed and ready to go, and you’re still sleeping there on the bed, looking like a reoccurring dream that I almost don’t wake from again. Reality, and the ticket to Liverpool, have set in of course. Mum’s dying to see me. I’m dying to get back home for a spell - not LA, of course, not there with you; I can’t do that while you’re there in your groove._

_Don’t make me wait another eight years, laa, okay? Fuck, who am I kidding. I’d wait eighty for you Al, and another eight on top of that, just to be yours for what I hoped would be another endless summer in the cycle._

_M x_

You’ve Dear John’d me, you prick, and I laugh even as I wipe at the tears and lift my ring, holding it in the light. I thought I’d never see it again but it was something I thought I was willing to give up. The weight of it, however, is comforting, and I understand how hard it must have been to hold this in your pocket and pick your time. I feel like you’ve driven me out to the forest, Mi, taken me on a long walk on a summer’s eve, and then when we get back to the car park you head for the car and tell me, with absolute conviction, that I can’t come with. You’ve let me go, for now at least, released me into the wilderness of my next adventure. I’ll watch the clearing, of course, and the car park, the highways as they scroll by, the oceans below, the clouds above, because you’re gonna come back to me, Miles. You always do.

When I’ve packed and I’m ready to go, I’m doused by the sudden wave of reality, come knocking softly on the hotel room door. I sigh, and fold your letter into me pocket, slip the ring onto my pinky, and answer.

She doesn’t judge. She doesn’t fight me on it. She understands, perhaps more than I do, the terrifying and dizzying heights you and I have fallen from. She kisses me softly and takes up my hand, graceful fingers flitting over the ring that’s back in its rightful place. Searching my eyes for a moment she gifts me with her impish smile and another kiss, so sweet, and so familiar that I cling to it, and to her, as her arms tighten around me. “It will be all right, love,” she soothes, resting her head against mine.

We don’t say much on the ride to the airport, but my hand grips hers in such a manner that I know it must hurt. She doesn’t pull away. She knows. We check in, we linger in the departure lounge, we board, we settle in, and as we taxi out to the runway, she hands me a worn paperback by Hemingway, corners folded down, edges frayed and soft from years of thumbing through.

“I know you’re not a fan,” she begins, “but I think you’ll find some comfort.” Then she’s sitting back with a content expression of contemplation, her earbuds in, and I turn to the book that falls open in my lap:

_“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”_


End file.
